MY ACCOUNT
Michael Laudrup has questioned whether Barcelona need to sign Erling Haaland and is unsure whether the Norwegian would suit Xavi’s style of play.
The Borussia Dortmund striker, who has hit 16 Bundesliga goals at a rate of just 75.31 minutes per goal this campaign, has been linked with a close-season move to many of Europe’s biggest clubs.
Barcelona have been touted as a possible destination for the 21-year-old, but club president Joan Laporta recently suggested that such a transfer might be beyond the Catalan Giants, saying he wouldn’t “do deals that could put the institution at risk”.
Former Blaugrana forward Laudrup, who scored 40 league goals during a five-year spell at Camp Nou between 1989 and 1994, pondered whether Haaland’s attributes would suit the patient passing game preferred by head coach and Barca legend Xavi.
“I have doubts as to whether he [Xavi] needs a striker like him,” Laudrup told Catalonian radio station RAC1.
“I don’t argue with Haaland as a goalscorer. He’s incredible. He keeps scoring and scoring and it’s no coincidence. The only thing is that he is a very physical player who needs a little space.
“He is not the ideal player [for Barcelona], he does not participate with the ball and in combinations in narrow spaces. He has to play in a team that plays and then gives him balls.
“He will always score goals in any team but I have doubts about how he plays compared to how he plays with Barca”.
Ahead of their huge Clasico clash with Real Madrid on Sunday, Barcelona have taken 34 points from 15 games in LaLiga since Xavi took over as coach, a record bettered only by Madrid, who have taken 39 points in that period.
Barcelona were languishing in ninth place in LaLiga when Xavi’s predecessor Ronald Koeman departed, but Laudrup, who won the 1992 European Cup alongside Koeman as part of Johan Cruyff’s legendary Blaugrana side, says his former team-mate did not get the same level of backing from the club’s hierarchy as Xavi has.
“I haven’t spoken with him [Koeman] recently,” Laudrup added. “But I have followed Barca also in Ronald’s time and his moment was a difficult moment for Barcelona, due to the debt, Messi’s goodbye.
“Ronald came at the most difficult time for Barcelona in recent years. He had a lot of problems.
“Now Xavi has come and things have improved, the easiest thing is to say that with Xavi things are going much better. Xavi will be a great coach, and I’m not saying this to defend Ronald, but in his [Koeman’s] time, due to some circumstances, there were no chances of signing [new players].
“Now with Xavi in January, Ferran [Torres] arrived, [Pierre-Emerick] Aubameyang and Adama [Traore]. You have to remember those chances that Xavi has had, Ronald didn’t have.
“Justice in football, sometimes [it] exists and sometimes [it] doesn’t. Ronald will have had his faults, like everyone else, but he hasn’t had the squad possibilities that there are now with Xavi.”
